Pumpkin Pie

Hey friends. I have a nice, meaty topic I want to discuss, but unfortunately I don't have the time to give it proper attention. But I don't want to leave you empty-handed, so I'm going to pass on my very favorite pumpkin pie recipe, which I originally got a few years ago from Whole Foods. Everyone else in my family loves pecan pie, and every year at Thanksgiving they say, 'why don't we just have 2 pecans, no one likes pumpkin!' I'm always tempted to give in, especially since in addition to traditional pumpkin pie, I make this chocolate chip pumpkin pie that is amazing. (It doesn't sound like it would be, but the chocolate cuts the sweetness of the filling and it is so very delicious.) But, I really love the texture and flavor of pumpkin pie, especially when it is made with the true raw ingredients (real cloves, cinnamon from a stick, etc.) I look forward to it all year. For me, it's not Thanksgiving without it.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:
3/4 cup packed natural brown sugar
11/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin, or 13/4 cups cooked fresh pumpkin
3 eggs
1 cup half & half
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and salt. Use your clean fingers to really mix it well. Crack the eggs into the bowl and whisk them into the brown sugar mixture with a wire whisk. Add the pumpkin, whisking it in completely. Gently whisk in the half and half. Pour filling into unbaked pie shell and bake at 375°F for 45 minutes or until set. Serves 8.

Rich the Dealer

Last weekend I had my work Holiday Party. Although I found it a little odd that it was so early in the holiday season, it was a very good time. Each year they have the event “Monte Carlo” themed at one of the Hilton banquet halls. Everyone has a few drinks, eats a very nice dinner, and then goes to the other area of the banquet hall where they have casino table games set up. There are about 200-250 people and it is always a very good time.

This was our second year attending the holiday party. My husband and I had finished dinner somewhat early so we decided to wander over to the gaming tables to secure a seat. As we walked over to the table games with our inexpensive wine in one hand and fake poker chips in the other we decided we would stick with poker for the night. Both of us enjoy playing poker and we knew that the blackjack tables would get too crowded as the night went on. As we headed towards the poker tables we realized that one of the dealers was the same dealer who dealt at our table last year! No one was sitting at his table yet, so we decided to take a seat and talk to him for a while before other players showed up at the table.

Rich was our dealer for the night. He was an older gentleman with kind eyes, a warm & inviting smile, and stark white hair. He made me blush by telling my husband that if he was just a few years younger he would have asked me to dance! He winked and said after a few years behind him he knows a thing or two about the charm of a dance floor. After chatting for a few minutes, recapping how the last year had been, he started telling us a few stories. We only had about 20 minutes to talk until other people started to join our table and wanting to play poker. However, as I sat and listened during those 20 minutes I got an interesting glimpse of a very insightful and experienced perspective from a man who had truly lived a full life.

Rich told us many stories that made us laugh and smile. He had been retired for 21 years and made a clear point to let us know that he had retired at the ripe young age of 54. He talked about how he had worked for US Steel Company for his entire career. He went into a long and very detailed account of the one time he almost left US Steel…. Xerox had heavily recruited him to move to Buffalo, NY to head their finance team. He actually took the job offer, had a going-away party at US Steel on Friday, left for Buffalo and realized it wasn’t the type of city he wanted to raise his family in. He called his old boss on Sunday afternoon and got his job back and was back at US Steel on Monday. Technically, he never actually missed a day of work at US Steel! Not only was he able to keep his pension but he also kept his future bragging rights to claim he had worked at the same company for 35 years. Although that particular story doesn’t have much to do with the rest of this blog, I thought it was such a fun story that I would share!

After hearing about his children, Rich talked about something that resonated with me and that I have thought a lot about since that evening. He talked about how he and his father had a wonderful bond when they were growing up. He had a deep love and respect for his father and his father shared the same reverence for him. He said that growing up they never told each other they loved each other, because they didn’t need to. Both of them understood the love that was there and so there was no need to voice that feeling. In his own words: “Two men telling each other they love each other? We just didn’t do that.” He said the love between a son and a father was to be expected and shown through actions, but not spoken about.

And then his father passed. Rich said he could not get over the overwhelming feeling of sadness and regret due to the fact that he and his father never actually said that they loved the other. He said they both knew and understood that love, but that he wishes every day he would have taken away a little bit of his pride and told his father how much he loved him and meant to him.

He then spoke about his own son who is a grown man now. He said it is the best feeling in the world to call your son on the phone, ask how he and the grandkids are doing, get an update on their activities, and end the phone call with his son saying, “I love you Dad”. No shame or pride to the words, just a simple phrase that represents so much more than just three words.

At that time, two fellow employees asked if they could join the table. The stories from Rich stopped and we played cards for the next few hours. Although the stories stopped, what he had shared continued to tug at my thoughts. My own father and I had a few years that we didn’t see or speak to one another. We have since resolved this rift in our past, however, I struggle getting the words “I love you” out to him when we talk. It seems so silly and for some reason I get this embarrassed feeling when I am getting ready to tell him I love him so I never do it. I don’t have this problem with anyone else in my family. In fact, I probably have the opposite effect with everyone else by telling them I love them too much! Especially my teenage brothers hate that!

So, this is something I am going to work on this holiday season. I will be traveling home to visit my family for nearly two weeks during Christmas. Rich is right, there is absolutely no reason why I should be hesitant to express these feelings. And, if god-forbid, something was to happen I know I would continuously regret this. So, to Rich the Dealer, thank you for sharing a struggle you have had. Your lessons learned have helped me kick start a change my own ineffective behaviors.

Short Stories: Part II

Yes, E became angry with M.  And they fought.  And they resolved it, sort of.  And then they drifted.  And to this day they don't speak. 

But even so, the courtship of Evan and M began pretty swiftly.  It was like up, up and away.  

It was slightly weird for me, to be the friend that both turned to. Especially after being the person that E turned to about Evan.   And after very little time of being stuck in the middle of this new scenario, it occurred to me that there were lots of things getting lost in translation between M and Evan.

At the start, M confided in me that Evan wanted to hang out all the time. When was she supposed to do her laundry? She couldn't get her life in order. They hung out Friday, he wanted to see her the next day, and again on Sunday... She worked overtime on weekends, she'd explain.  "There's more to life than work," he'd respond.  Followed by several silent seconds of puzzled stares.  

But other than that things seemed to be OK. If she ever noticed a red flag, she'd forget it because for example, he'd send her a million roses on her birthday. And one night he texted her that he was falling in love with her. OK yes, a text, but still.....

Then our company sent Evan and I, among other producers, to a convention in San Antonio, Texas. Strange place, I'm not going to lie. It was about 115 degrees of dry heat. I didn't even know I was sweating until I looked down at the puddles that had collected in the creases of my elbows. It was so strange. And we were up at dawn and off to work at the convention to try to sell our product. We were delirious and exhausted by noon and yet we would stay until 7pm when the huge hall shut down finally.

At least I had my friend "Emy" with me. She is bubbly and funny. At every work dinner we got drunk and laughed. She too thought Evan was dreamy. It's like the girls just throw themselves at him- unbelievable. Really, I've never seen anything like it.

One night in Texas Evan went out drinking with some coworkers. I opted for sleep. But I got a late night call from him. I could hear the bar in the background.

"Don't you think it's weird?" he shouted over the din, "Don't you think it's strange that she doesn't want to spend more time with me? What kind of a relationship is that? I don't know what I'm doing... How often do you see your boyfriend?"

I brushed him off, told him he was too drunk, then got off the phone. I was a little weirded out, but our trip was over. We left Texas the next day. Like kids heading back after a field trip we were silent. Evan and I passed out on the car ride back to the airport. We snored. Our coworkers made fun of us.

On the flight home I had an empty seat next to me, that- right before takeoff- Evan jumped into. We talked about music. He gave me one of his earbuds and we listened to his playlist. I gave him half my granola bar.

Then we hit turbulence... for the entire ride. I'm not the best flier. At one rough point I cried hysterically and plopped my forehead on Evan's shoulder, dug my fingers into his arm. I have no idea why this made me feel better. We hit a bump and someone's soda can popped and flew across the cabin. I gasped loudly. The flight attendant patted my arm and told me I was being "very brave" which was really embarrassing. But the tears kept coming and I was holding my breath.

Evan put his arm around me and kept saying, "I said a prayer before we took off. And whenever I say a prayer, God takes care of me. And you're with me, so you'll be fine too." He let me squeeze his hand and he made little circles on my knee with his finger tips whispering, "shhhh... it's going to be ok... shhhh."

He made me laugh when he said nervously, "Isn't there medicine you can take for this kind of thing?" I smiled through my tears and wiped them away with my hands self-consciously and saw that my tears were black from mascara. I said, "Oh my gosh. I am such a mess." I grabbed for a tissue and Evan said with a renewed tone- a serious and subdued tone- "No you don't. You look great."

My heart stopped for a moment but not because of the airplane turbulence. This was a new turbulence. Like that false sense that something isn't a problem until you realize or acknowledge it's a problem. Know how that happens sometimes? It's why people say all that about ignorance and bliss.

The tears stopped momentarily with my head still on his shoulder. I didn't move because I was afraid that if I did he would feel me stir and he would know that I was onto something.  So I didn't move but my mind was suddenly very distracted and alert as I started adding up sequences, scenes.  And I became starkly aware that I had no safety net after all.

And I wondered, for the first time, how ugly was this crash going to be and who exactly was going to survive.

Short Stories: Part I

I love short stories.  And am so inspired by the colorful context in which the good ones are written- a retired doctor in a lakeside cabin, a young boy climbing on mossy castle steps in Edinburgh...  Think of all the places you could take your characters with backdrops like these.  But my short story does not have such scenery.  It takes place in a windowless office, with orange walls, a copier, and 30 too-close desks with glass partitions that only go halfway up.  

We'd worked together for two years and this was our "new" office.  None of us could believe that someone in 2008 would actively choose orange walls.  But it just added to our general, suppressed contempt for the mindless work we were doing.  We were bored.  And our walls were orange.  

As in any office space, we socialized.  Mostly, the 20-somethings (which were most of the 20 producers on the project) were friendly.  As time progressed we'd learn on a random Monday that so-and-so had gone out and got wasted with so-and-so over the weekend.  At first it was surprising to hear this news, but then it became normal.

One day, early on, a new boy came into the office.  Let's call him "Evan."  He was tall, with olive complexion, a brooding, serious glare.  He wore cool sneakers.  All the girls thought he was dreamy.  I never really got what they saw.  I remember showing my mother a picture of him on Facebook and saying, "Do you think this guy is good looking?"  She did.  And I really didn't see it.  

Also, I found the fact that he never spoke to any of us to be pretty smug, so I decided not to give him any attention.  But I remember, the second Evan walked into the room my friend, "M," emailed me and declared her love.  

A few months after Evan started, our company had their annual holiday party.  It was held on the set of a very famous TV show.  But for the party, it was decorated like different subway stations in Manhattan and each subway had a different ethnic food to match the neighborhood.  Our project stuck together at one table, somewhere between the skewers at Canal Street and the canolis at Mulberry.  We didn't know anyone else at the company.  

At one point our coworkers went to scavenge for more free food and left me alone at the table with another friend, "E."  We were chatting and giggling when a guy from a different department waltzed up to us holding a beer.  He had blue eyes and a big smile.  I bet he thought he was pretty charming.  "So, where do you girls work?"  We mumbled back, "...this website..."  

I don't know what we said to this guy.  The awkwardness went on for a while.  Then, I could see over Blue Eyes's shoulder that Evan was watching the whole exchange.  I looked at my feet uncomfortably.  Evan walked over, slid in right next to me and said loudly, "SO where do YOU work?"  I snorted, trying to hold back a big loud laugh.  

It was the first time I ever spoke to Evan.  And maybe it was the beer he was drinking, but he was very comfortable and funny.  He wasn't silent or smug.  After he scared away Blue Eyes I talked to him the rest of the time.  Periodically I'd call over all the girls we worked with who loved him secretly.  I'd say "you have to hear this story" and nudge Evan to tell them what he'd just told me.  After the party I texted my friends:  "he doesn't have such a bad personality after all!"

But it didn't matter for me.  I had a serious boyfriend.  Evan knew that.  And I sort of fell into the safety net that I often do, and I assumed everything was platonic because we both knew I was off limits.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.  

One Monday, a few weeks after the holiday party my friend and coworker, E, and I took a coffee break.  She had a nervous smile and I knew that well enough to ask about it.  She said that on New Year's Eve Evan texted her at around 11pm to ask her if she had anyone to kiss when the ball dropped.  She didn't respond to this message.  E is the nervous, shy type.  And I'm not going to lie, I was shocked to learn that the coveted guy in the room was advancing on the shy/nervous girl.  It's like the laws of high school were all warped.  Not that I minded- it would have been a nice twist in the typical short story.

But she was wary of the known hot guy's forward messages.  "I don't know if I like him," she said.  And I said, "If he's flirting with you, then you should go for it."  And I gave her that advice because honestly, I honestly thought maybe he wasn't a typical "hot guy."  And maybe Evan had fallen for the girl who was a nerd (not the sexy nerd, mind you) for Halloween.   And the thought made me like him even more.  What a good guy he was turning out to be.

So the following weekend E and Evan met up for a classic New York City brunch at an outdoor restaurant.  And while they ate and chatted a crazy-eyed man approached them from the sidewalk and surprised them with a pencil sketch of the two of them that he'd drawn-- with a heart around the picture.  I could just imagine E's blush as she looked down and away.  Evan just swatted at the guy when he asked for compensation for his art and said something along the lines of "aaah, get the hell outta here."

So, everything's going swimmingly, it seems.  But then there was M.  The girl who immediately liked Evan.  (Oh gosh this is so complicated and it's only going to get worse).  

M was pretty shocked that Evan appeared to be putting the moves on another girl in the room.  M swore he flirted with her one time at the copier.  But oh well, she must have misinterpreted.  We shrugged it off.  Then M got a job at a different department and she left us for a new desk down the hall.  And one afternoon she ran into Evan in the hall.  They shared smiling, mindless busy talk.  When she got back to her desk there was a message waiting for her from him-- "How are you?  Do you like your new job?"  Her heart skipped a beat, she got butterflies.  And an email rapid fire began.  

Meanwhile, Evan was hanging out with E on weekends.  But he'd yet to make a move.  Weeks had gone by- months even- since that New Years Eve text.  I was already aware of his new flirtations with M.  I advised E to hold back but didn't tell her why.  I told her to be less available.  To disappear for a while.  But she refused to believe that his emails to her and the nights they'd hung out at bars meant nothing.  Even if he'd never bought her a single drink.  

So she didn't take my advice.  Which is fine, you know, I'm not the type of girl to say she told you so.  A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.  I made plenty of mistakes, while being completely aware that I was making them and those were some of the best times of my life.   So, I get it...

Then we got our new, orange office.  And I was seated one glass partition away from Evan.  Whenever I looked up from my keyboard he was right there.  And we all became better friends. 

Then one night, after months of E and Evan going on these sporadic "dates" together (with no end-of-date kisses or concrete romantic advances, only innuendos and texts in which Evan called her "baby" at the end of some of the messages)-- we all went out dancing.  E, M and myself and a bunch of other friends.  At 2AM, E got a text message from Evan and we all huddled around her phone to read it.  She was squealing in delight.    

I read the words out loud, "who... are you... with?"  

What difference did it make who she was with?  By that time, as I'd mentioned earlier, I was skeptical of this relationship.  At first I imagined him as a nice guy who maybe felt comfortable with the quiet girl.  But I'd already started to think he was after something else.  Maybe he was just looking for a friend?   After reading that message, I realized he was after someone else.  

I don't know what E responded, but later that night (or earlier that morning) Evan showed up and later still, after all of us had gone home, Evan drunkenly confessed to E that he liked M.

Yes, that night was a disaster. 

Frolleagues: Friend or Foe?

I finally joined the world of online social networking sites with a myspace page several years ago. I couldn’t really get into it because I’ve never felt comfortable having all of my personal information out there for anyone to find. I like to keep most of the people who aren’t in my close circle at varying levels of information-sharing.

About a year ago I joined the world of facebook, which is much more entertaining than myspace (and a lot less weirdly flashy and pink when it comes to people’s pages). After friending several really close pals, I realized I needed criteria for determining whether someone would be a “friend” or not. I don’t mean to be a snob, I just don’t like the idea of 600 more or less random people thinking that we’re friends. Or being able to see what I’m doing. A guy I dated for two weeks in college doesn’t need to know I have a terrible cold and am lying in bed all day. Again, it’s back to that whole information-sharing bit. So I created the following, probably very weird, criterion:
-If I have never seen you first thing in the morning, in your jammies, or in some sort of compromising situation, then you don’t make the cut. (don’t ask, it was the best I could come up with).

This kept my list at a very respectable 18 for a long time. Eighteen friends, woohoo! Eighteen people who wrote on my wall, cared what I was doing, and got tagged in all my pictures. I seemed to have this facebook thing well under control.

Unlike with myspace, I put my actual name on my facebook page (the myspace page has the dog’s name. Good luck finding me – the whole point!). This wasn’t a problem until I got a friend request from a supervisor at work. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO ABOUT PEOPLE AT WORK. So I said yes, feeling very pressured to do so. Then more requests followed (thank you, People You Might Know Tool). I reluctantly became friends with all of them, but I feel now like I really have to restrict what I say. Isn’t the whole point of facebook to go out and say “this is ME! Like it or not, this is the GM that you’re friends with?” Well now I can never say

GM is……in an alcohol-induced coma
OR.
GM is……..posting her resume online!
OR
GM hates the bitches at work

Oh no, instead I have to say things like

GM is still at work! (total lie, I hate my job most days and manage to slip out under the pretense of riding the bus or having a meeting across town – not that anyone notices anyway).

So, for all of you facebookers out there with frolleagues, be careful of what you say. Or better yet, figure out how to stay hidden! And if you ever see the message GM is still at work, know that’s code for GM is posting her resume online!